WATER VALLEY — Alexe van Beuren got tired of driving to Oxford from Water Valley whenever she ran out of her favorite milk from Brown Family Dairy or some homegrown produce.

To rectify the situation she took matters into her own hands and opened her own grocery store.

The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery opened its doors last month. Located on North Main Street in Water Valley, van Beuren and her husband, Kagan Coughlin, renovated the building most commonly known to locals as "Mr. Parker's Five & Dime" which was built around 1860. The 5,000-square-foot building had stood empty for several years when Coughlin decided to purchase the building.

"He got it into his head he could do something with it," van Beuren said. "We bought it the day I found out I was pregnant with our first child."

Coughlin has spent weekends and evenings for the past three years working on the renovations. He's still working on the upstairs that houses an apartment and office — recently rented by local author Ace Atkins.

The couple's first thought was to rent out the lower part of the building but 5,000 square feet was just a lot of building.

"No one was coming forth to rent 5,000 square feet," van Beuren said.

With two small children — Annaliese, almost 3, and Caspian, 1, — van Beuren was ready to get back to work but wanted something close by her children.

Van Beuren started the Water Valley Farmers Market about three years ago with the help of Justin McGuirk of Fat Possum Records. Even though McGuirk moved away during the first season of the market, van Beuren and the local vendors discovered they had started providing a service others wanted.

"We had three vendors at the start of the season," she said. "By the end of the season, we had 12 regular vendors with a peak of about 20."

Already having the contacts for local farmers, bakers and butchers, such as the Brown Family Dairy Farm in Lafayette County, the Fiddlin' Rooster Farm in Water Valley and Smokehouse Meats in Pontotoc, van Beuren decided to open a grocery store that similar to the farmers' market, but indoors.

It's reminiscent of the old-fashioned store where the produce is grown locally, the cookies and bread are baked fresh every day and the milk is sold in glass bottles. It hearkens back to a time when candy was sold out of big glass jars and children were not only welcome in stores, but encouraged.

At B.T.C., children have their own area, complete with playhouse and a ball-filled pool in a closed-in area with rubber matting.

"We've had 20 children there on some days," van Beuren said.

Right now about 20 percent of the produce at B.T.C. is locally grown but as more farmers finish their harvests, van Beuren hopes it will increase each week. Along with produce, she gets eggs from two or three local vendors.

"By July, about one-third of my produce should be from local farmers," she said. "But we are a grocery store so we want to have things like bananas and oranges available as well."

To keep costs down for her customers, items like flour, cheese, pasta and beans are bought in bulk and then separated into smaller containers. Other items available are Kalamata olives, pesto, imported chocolate, freshly roasted fair-trade coffee and micro-brewed and imported beer.

"You won't find Budweiser here," she said with a chuckle.

Shoppers can sit at a booth and enjoy a pop with a cookie while reading a magazine.

The store's motto, "Where food tastes like it used to," is something van Beuren hopes to live up to each day.

"We're not special or fancy," she said. "We're just trying to make sure everything we sell tastes fresh and good."